Portland through the eyes of a festival-loving, dessert-feasting, travel-addicted Midwesterner.

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Music, Dining and Dancing

(Sounds like such a classy weekend!)

Today is a catch-up day for me. I’m tired, our apartment is messy, we have “family visiting” plans to make, and I have two blog posts hanging over my head. And “The Help” is sitting on my shelf begging to be read. So, I made the executive decision to take a random day off on a Wednesday. Sometimes I think catch-up days are the best days off, but I hate wasting them when we could use more for trips back home, for weddings or other less selfish options. But I must admit, sitting in my PJs in a quiet apartment with Cooper chilling at my feet feels fabulous so far!

Roaming in the Edgefield gardens

Rewind to the weekend before last. Jeff and I are avid concert fans, plus admirers of the McMenamins dynasty in Portland. Put them together, and we got an Amos Lee concert with our neighbors at the playground for adults, Edgefield. This place is 20 minutes outside of Portland, situated on 74 acres of farmland, and super artsy/whimsical just like every other McMenamins property. Speckled across the grounds are a spa, movie theater, European-style hotel, two par-3 golf courses, gardens, wine tasting bar, distillery, amphitheater and 10 restaurants/bars. It’s pretty darn cool.

We like Amos Lee but don’t know much of his music, although we do know it’s chill. Perfect for the setting. Daniel, Lindsay and we went early and roamed around, played a couple games of shuffleboard, did some wine tasting, choked down some pre-concert shots (ack! can’t do that anymore) and spent an hour or so in the gift shop. Amos was good, we had fun, and we know we’ll be back.

On Saturday, Jeff and I hit up the Bite of Oregon festival. This was no deep-fried butter type of festival. The Bite is the largest outdoor food festival in Oregon, a 28-year tradition that raises hundreds of thousands of dollars each year for the Special Olympics. Very Oregon-like, with local restaurants, breweries and wineries passing out tastes (for $$) of their wares. It was better than some of the other Portland festivals we’ve tried but still a pricey afternoon. (Low point: Naive us got sucked into a sneaky timeshare pitch – blah.) I did get a chance to try my very first Voodoo Doughnut though! Unfortunately they were running out of all the cool kinds – like the one with peanut butter and Oreos that I wanted – so I ended up with a good but pretty run-of-the-mill chocolate/peanut butter glazed one. Still a treat.

On the walk home, we stumbled across a dance show in the downtown Director Park. Downtown Portland is just brimming with outdoor performances – some impromptu, some not. We haven’t figured out if there are schedules out there somewhere but every walk downtown is usually met with some surprising, semi-odd performance. That’s one of the reasons I love Portland!

In the middle of a fierce game of shuffleboard at Lucky Staehly’s Pool Hall at Edgefield

Super affordable wine tasting at Edgefield (Jeff and I split a $3 flight!)